caa a22 4500 605497362 CHVBK 20210128100541.0 cr unu---uuuuu 210128e20150901xx s 000 0 eng 10.1007/s10441-015-9252-1 doi (NATIONALLICENCE)springer-10.1007/s10441-015-9252-1 SMT or TOFT? How the Two Main Theories of Carcinogenesis are Made (Artificially) Incompatible [Elektronische Daten] [Baptiste Bedessem, Stéphanie Ruphy] The building of a global model of carcinogenesis is one of modern biology's greatest challenges. The traditional somatic mutation theory (SMT) is now supplemented by a new approach, called the Tissue Organization Field Theory (TOFT). According to TOFT, the original source of cancer is loss of tissue organization rather than genetic mutations. In this paper, we study the argumentative strategy used by the advocates of TOFT to impose their view. In particular, we criticize their claim of incompatibility used to justify the necessity to definitively reject SMT. First, we note that since it is difficult to build a non-ambiguous experimental demonstration of the superiority of TOFT, its partisans add epistemological and metaphysical arguments to the debate. This argumentative strategy allows them to defend the necessity of a paradigm shift, with TOFT superseding SMT. To do so, they introduce a notion of incompatibility, which they actually use as the Kuhnian notion of incommensurability. To justify this so-called incompatibility between the two theories of cancer, they move the debate to a metaphysical ground by assimilating the controversy to a fundamental opposition between reductionism and organicism. We show here that this argumentative strategy is specious, because it does not demonstrate clearly that TOFT is an organicist theory. Since it shares with SMT its vocabulary, its ontology and its methodology, it appears that a claim of incompatibility based on this metaphysical plan is not fully justified in the present state of the debate. We conclude that it is more cogent to argue that the two theories are compatible, both biologically and metaphysically. We propose to consider that TOFT and SMT describe two distinct and compatible causal pathways to carcinogenesis. This view is coherent with the existence of integrative approaches, and suggests that they have a higher epistemic value than the two theories taken separately. Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht, 2015 TOFT nationallicence SMT nationallicence Controversy nationallicence Cancer nationallicence Pluralism nationallicence Bedessem Baptiste Laboratoire TIMC-IMAG/DyCTIM, UJF, CNRS UMR 5525, Grenoble, France aut Ruphy Stéphanie Laboratoire Philosophie, Pratiques et Langages, Université Grenoble-Alpes, Grenoble, France aut Acta Biotheoretica Springer Netherlands 63/3(2015-09-01), 257-267 0001-5342 63:3<257 2015 63 10441 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10441-015-9252-1 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI BK010053 XK010053 XK010000 Metadata rights reserved Springer special CC-BY-NC licence nationallicence 1 research-article jats NATIONALLICENCE NATIONALLICENCE NL-springer NATIONALLICENCE 856 40 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10441-015-9252-1 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI NATIONALLICENCE 700 1- Bedessem Baptiste Laboratoire TIMC-IMAG/DyCTIM, UJF, CNRS UMR 5525, Grenoble, France aut NATIONALLICENCE 700 1- Ruphy Stéphanie Laboratoire Philosophie, Pratiques et Langages, Université Grenoble-Alpes, Grenoble, France aut NATIONALLICENCE 773 0- Acta Biotheoretica Springer Netherlands 63/3(2015-09-01), 257-267 0001-5342 63:3<257 2015 63 10441